City irate over park damage

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, February 2, 2005

The city had a problem with the trucks damaging the beach, so workers set up the cement blocks.

Now the city has a problem with snowmobiles.

Candlewood Town Park on Hayestown Road is Danbury's main swimming area. Located at the southern tip of Candlewood Lake, the park consists of a lawn, boat launch, outbuildings and a sandy beach.

The boat launch is now blocked by a towering pile of snow. Under the snow are huge concrete blocks, placed to stop people from driving onto the ice, around the chain-link fence that surrounds the park, and onto the beach.

Sometimes people with trucks attach chains to a block and drag it aside to clear a way to the beach. The city replaces it.

Snowmobilers aren't so easily discouraged. Snowmobile tracks trail over the piled snow, over the blocks, down the ramp, onto the ice and over the beach.

On the lawn overlooking the park, people have driven snowmobiles around a long oval, gouging a track into the landscape. Grass and dirt are banking up on the turns.

Come summer, it will all have to be repaired.

"They groove that in every year," said John Cummings of Danbury, who was fishing Wednesday afternoon near the beach. He has fished Candlewood Lake his entire life. His father Pat was fishing farther north Wednesday after catching a three-pound trout on Tuesday.

Cummings doesn't own a snowmobile or a quad, but he's well acquainted with them.

"You see them here all the time," Cummings said. "They'll be back in the evening."

The tracks in the lawn are deep. In places, they look like someone sat in a quad, revved the engine while holding onto the brakes, and then suddenly released the brakes. The driver did this again and again. The tires dug trenches through the snow, through the grass and into the sand underneath.

Now that the lake is frozen entirely, snowmobiles and quads can reach the park from any direction across the ice. They don't need to sneak down the boat ramp.

City officials are fed up.

"It's going to cost us thousands of dollars to replace the grass and sand," said Mayor Mark Boughton.

"They should be arrested," said Public Works Director Bill Buckley. "People use snowmobiles. Enjoy them, but on the park, look at what you did."